Two ballot drop boxes damaged by fire in Vancouver and Portland
An investigation is underway in two cases involving ballot drop boxes that were lit afire in the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area early Monday morning.
The Vancouver case is the more serious of the two. Officers say they found a suspicious device next to the box in which hundreds of ballots were burned. The FBI is investigating. Police in Portland say the fire there singed only three ballots.
Oregon Public Broadcasting reports the two cases may be related to each other and to a third attempt earlier this month to set fire to ballots at a different Vancouver drop box. A police spokesman say there’s enough evidence to make that connection. Authorities in the two cities say they plan to monitor drop boxes more closely between now and the election.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, is urging people who submitted ballots at the Vancouver location between Saturday morning and Monday morning to check the status of their ballots online at votewa.gov while they still have time to procure and submit a replacement ballot.
Hobbs’ opponent in next week’s election, Republican Dale Whitaker, issued a statement criticizing Hobbs for not doing more. Whitaker says the state should deploy whatever resources necessary to help election officials in Clark County.
“He is actively engaged in election interference by not doing everything he has to do in his official capacity as a chief elections official in this state,” he said.
Whitaker called on Hobbs to issue letters to voters in Clark County, informing them about the specifics of what happened and what he’s doing to remedy the situation. He also advised Vancouver voters who dropped their ballots in that box to contact their county auditor’s office or check votewa.gov.
One note about voting in Washington: if you want to update your voter registration to cast a ballot in this election, you must do it in person at your county elections office. The online registration deadline passed yesterday. Idaho’s early in-person voting deadline is Friday.
Trump deportation plan gets mixed reaction in eastern Washington
Former President Donald Trump has threatened to deport millions of immigrant people if he is elected. If that is carried out, what are the practical effects, both across the nation and in the Inland Northwest?
Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for United Farm Workers, says a mass deportation wouldn’t affect just those families being deported.
“The threat of mass deportation is harmful in and of itself. It is not going to help American workers. It's actually going to undercut them by creating a more desperate and vulnerable class of workers that employers will abuse and, of course, any effort to actually deport undocumented immigrants will harm their families and their communities, including many millions of US citizens and mixed status families," he said.
According to Washington’s Office of Financial Management, almost 4% of Washington state’s population is undocumented, the ninth-highest percentage among the states.
Hector Quiroga, an immigration attorney at Quiroga Law Office in Spokane, says because many of that 4% work in a variety of businesses, he’d be surprised if a mass deportation were enforced, considering the positive economical impact they make.
“There is just a lot of industries who benefit by the millions of the labor of undocumented immigrants because they don't get to pay them what they're supposed to pay, and they hide the benefits that they're supposed to have. And so I don't think that is going to be quite that easy," he said.
Trump claims his mass deportation plan would deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. This plan is modeled after the mass deportation plan in the 1950s by former President Dwight Eisenhower.
More than half of Americans support Trump’s mass deportation plan, according to a recent Scripps News survey.
Washington insurance commissioner releases survey on Spokane County wildfires
Washington’s insurance commissioner says most of the people who lost their homes in Spokane County’s 2023 Oregon Road and Gray fires didn’t have enough insurance to cover their losses.
Mike Kreidler says his office surveyed insurance companies earlier this year to find out how much they’d paid out in claims. They found the companies wrote checks for the maximum allowed by the policy for more than 240 policyholders. Investigations of more than 160 claims are ongoing.
The commissioners office found insurance companies have paid more than $212 million to property owners affected by the two fires with about $320,000 as the average claim.
Kreidler recommends homeowners regularly review their policies and buy at least two years of what he calls ‘loss of use’ coverage to pay their expenses while they rebuild their homes.
Reporting contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Oregon Public Broadcasting and Monica Carrillo-Casas.